I knew this place would have caché, considering that the W is one of the world’s top hotel brands, and Bogotá’s W did not disappoint. Everyone I spoke to was very impressed that we landed a room at the city’s top address. Indeed we were lucky to be here and were ecstatic when the W decided to sponsor our stay for the making of this Elska edition.

The hotel is perfectly located in Usaquén, a former village that got swallowed up by Bogotá’s expansion but still retains its old charm, complete with town square and central church. There are also loads of great restaurants, an open-air market, and the city’s most attractive shopping area, Hacienda Santa Barbara, which the W sits opposite.

Inside you have everything you could want: a spacious and well-equipped fitness centre with pool and sauna, a sexy lounge bar, a restaurant that has Bogotá’s best buffet breakfast, and rooms that are modern and stylish but still totally comfortable. This is not a style-over-substance type of place. Substance is in abundance, including the best bed of any hotel I know.

Later when it came time to meet Andrés for our shoot, a surprise family home visit meant we needed another location for our nude shoot. When I suggested meeting at the W, he frankly was a little too excited. He turned up at his dapperest, wearing his black suit and those big-lensed glasses that he was so proud of. We started with some pics outside the entrance in an epic garden of angled fluorescent beams before we continued to the privacy of our room.

After the shoot he still was so abuzz that he kept pestering me that he couldn’t bear to wait two months for the publication of this edition to see his pics. So Andrés cheekily demanded that I do another series of shots on his phone so he could prove, and brag, to his friends that he just did a bonafide photoshoot at the W. When he sees the final shots here in this book, done on our Elska camera, I am sure he’ll be even prouder, and even braggier!